The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. One area in which there is a demand to increase ease of information transfer relates to the delivery of services to a user of a mobile terminal. The services may be in the form of a particular media or communication application desired by the user, such as a music player, a game player, an electronic book, short messages, email, content sharing, etc. The services may also be in the form of interactive applications in which the user may respond to a network device in order to perform a task or achieve a goal. The services may be provided from a network server or other network device, or even from the mobile terminal such as, for example, a mobile telephone, a mobile television, a mobile gaming system, etc.
In some situations, it may be desirable for an application (e.g., a web based application) to have the ability to access information or objects from a device providing information to the application. For example, context data including device data related to capabilities, current operating state and/or other device data that may be static and/or dynamic may be useful information for the application to access. In this regard, context data may be associated with content stored on a device in order to provide information which might assist in identifying data of interest. Context data is data that characterizes a particular situation at any point in time and may be either static or dynamic. Metadata is another form of information which may be associated with content to assist in ordering and identifying the content. Metadata may be considered to be data that provides additional data about data and is generally thought of as being static. When media content is recorded or an application inquires about situational characteristics related to an object, the context data associated with the content or object may be referenced. The context data may be used by applications for different purposes, such as generating metadata or performing an adaptation based on the context. When used for adaptation purposes, no context is typically stored, but is instead used dynamically.
Delivery Context Client Interface (DCCI) is a mechanism through which applications can access device data such as delivery context information using, for example, a Document Object Model (DOM) like interface. As such, DCCI may act as a consumer interface for web applications (consumers) and providers of data to a tree-like interface. Providers of data can be any static or dynamic sources providing information such as device location, device orientation, screen brightness, battery strength, and many others.
Although DCCI may be useful in providing information to applications about device status, DCCI may currently only be considered a consumer interface. As such, applications (e.g., consumers) may typically only read data that is provided by providers, and thus the applications themselves do not provide information to the information providers. In other words, DCCI is typically characterized by a one-way flow of information from devices acting as information providers to the web applications acting as consumers. Additionally, DCCI currently uses a fixed set of interfaces and thus, may not support remote properties, but only in-device properties.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide a framework for overcoming at least some of the disadvantages discussed above.